


middle (ground)

by NotAllThoseWhoWander



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 08:41:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/951042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAllThoseWhoWander/pseuds/NotAllThoseWhoWander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann trails off, looks at the ceiling. He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

1.

 

He wakes up in the K-Science Lab, surrounded by the low hum and hiss of machinary, the stacatto of chalk on a board. 

"How long was I asleep?"

Hermann, standing on a chair and straining to reach the top of the board, does not turn around.

"Long enough."

" _Shit_. What's the date?"

"Pull yourself together. Perhaps if you ceased  _salivating_ over kaiju entrails, you'd find it easier to keep your wits about you." Hermann glances over, gaze raking Newt's disheveled shirt, unlooped tie, untidy hair. Newt pointedly ignore this glance and shirts blearily through research papers on his desk; more than half have fallen victim to chemical and coffee stains. In the same vein, the half-drunk mugs around the beakers seem to have multiplied. 

"Dude, it's ten-thirty PM."

"So it would seem." Hermann turns back to the chalkboard, scratching away. 

"What are you still doing here?"

"Ha!" Hermann barks. "Your work may allow for  _rest periods_ , but I am afraid that  _mathematics_ never sleep."

"Oh, right. Like I've never caught  _you_ drifting off at that stupid chalkboard. Or that time I found you in the simulator? Huh? Yeah, pretty embarrasing, Gottlieb."

What he very carefully  _doesn't_ mention is that Hermann looked kind of sweetly innocent (or something) even if he was wearing that god-awful horrendous sweater that Newt might have tried to douse with Kaiju venom once or twice, and without his cane and chalkboard and brutal accent he gave the appearance of being _loveable_. Or something. And maybe for about a nanosecond Newt wanted to reach out and brush Hermann's hair away from his forehead or maybe put an arm around him or—or something. 

Hermann scribbles out another equation—some dull function, all those gloomy predictions—and mutters to himself.  _Imbecile, so childish..._

 _  
_"Yeah," Newt says, although he knows that Hermann is most definitely not listening. "That's what I thought."

* * *

_"Geiszler?"_

_"In here!" Newt scrambles from the closet with an armful of supplies, trailing loose wires. Stacker Pentecost, trim as ever in a dark suit, steps around the corner and into the sparse lab. "Still reorganizing, but nothing that a couple of storage containers and some good duct tape can't handle."_

_Pentecost offers a thin smile (he doesn't understand Newt's scientific ramblings, apparently) and extends a hand._

_"From here on out, you will be working with Dr. Gottlieb."_

_"Huh?" Newt watches the young man step forward, hardly fresh-faced but certainly no grizzled researcher, clad in a ridiculous faux-fur-trimmed coat and eyeglasses._

_"I trust that you two will work out...laboratory dealings." Pentecost claps Gottlieb on the back. The young scientist flinches, looks miffed. Newt watches Pentecost's retreating back, posture flawless. Then he turns to Gottlieb._

_"I figured we'd each take half of this lab space. The others have set up downstairs and around the corner."_

_"Fantastic." Gottlieb doesn't smile. He's holding two cardboard boxes full of papers and files. "I'll take this half."_

_"Okay, fi—" Newt breaks off as Pentecost reenters the lab, heels sharp on the grated metal flooring._

_"I forgot to mention your housing arrangements."_

_"Our what?" Newt coils a length of wire around his arm._

_"Following Dome regulations, you will be sharing on-site accomodations." Pentecost clicks his pen, produces a clipboard and marks something off an unseen list. Newt turns to stare sideways at Gottlieb._

_"Uh, what?"_

_At the same time, Gottlieb says, "no," a little too loudly._

_Stacker Pentecost looks up very slowly. "Excuse me?"_

_"Um, I only meant that—I've been renting space out while I've been living in the city—uh, living quarters, that is." Newt doesn't mention that the 'living quarters' are about ten square feet of thin walls above a noodle shop. Still, he's happier on his own._

_"I, too, am perfectly happy to take it upon myself to—" Gottlieb begins._

_"And I will take it upon myself to remind you two that Dome personell are required to live on-site during all training and base work. I'll leave your housing information here." Pentecost drops a slip of paper on the empty desk. He stares at Newt and Gottlieb for a long, tense, silent moment. Then he turns and strides away._

_"What does he think this is?" Newt picks up the slip of paper. A room number in Personell Housing is written in tidy pen. "University?"_

_"What does he think_ we  _are?" Gottlieb snaps, dropping the boxes with a thump. "Damn_ rangers _?"_

_"No idea. But I don't like it." He extends a hand. "Newt Geiszer."_

_"Newt?"_

_"Nickname. Short for Newton. That's a mouthful, I guess. And pretty stuffy, so most people—"_

_"I'm sure that surnames will suffice." He smiles thinly. "Gottlieb."_

_"Right." Newt shakes the guy's hand. He honestly can't see any kind of friendship blossoming between them. Gottlieb turns away and begins to sort through his boxes. Newt watches him. Maybe, he thinks. Maybe._

* * *

_  
_They go down to the mess hall together, passing Mako in the hall. She joins them in the lift, trim and lithe in workout clothing. Newt, who still struggles to see her as any kind of adult, let alone a budding ranger, tries to exchange pleasantries without touching on the subject of Jaegers, or drifting, or piloting. Having known Mako since she was a gangly pre-teen, he's been privy to years of her poorly-hidden yearning. He's seen the way she looks at those Jaegers. He's seen the way she looks at Becket, the handsome new ranger, but choses not to comment on that.

The mess is half-empty; a couple of trainees and students sharing a table at one end, some pilots sprawled across a few benches. Hermann procures three cups of tea, steam rising in tendrils. They sit together, only ones at the table.

"Some of the pilots and lab kids are having karaoke tonight. I signed us up for a duet. Celine Dion."

"You did not." Hermann glowers. 

"I did."

"Did not. Even you wouldn't stoop so low." 

"Wouldn't I?" But Hermann knows Newt far too well. They share an amicable silence for a few moments. Newt watches some of the trainees make huge hand gestures, and knows without hearing their conversation that they're talking about kaiju. Funny, how they don't look so terrified. He was the same at their age—early twenties, eager to snap to attention, serve mindlessly. Told to fear the kaiju, but privately yearning for a good up-close look. 

"Look at them," Hermann says, suddenly. Newt follows his gaze to the pilots. "Have they got any idea?"

Newt doesn't need to ask  _about what_. "Do you think they'll survive?"

Hermann looks away, drinks more tea. "There are some things that even theory cannot touch."

And Newt knows that he's lying, has seen the charts entitled  _Pilot Mortality Rates_ in Hermann's scrawled handwriting.

"You know, though, we've all seen the way those guys train, they're all fantastically good and really they've been training for years to get to the point that they're at now and—"

"Newton," Hermann says, staring at the table. 

"What?" Newt follows Hermann's gaze once more, and his heartbeat hitches. The milky tea in Hermann's mug shakes, ever so slightly.  A solid, repetative vibration. "Damn it," he says quietly. He looks up. Their eyes meet.

The warning system's alarms rip through the stillness. Lights whirl and flash. The pilots are on their feet in an instant, sprinting for the doorway. The band of trainees stick close together, still talking and gesticulating wildly. Hermann and Newt are the last out the door, Hermann leaning heavily on his cane.

Of course, a dominant part of Newt wants to linger, maybe go up to the rooftop or down to the bayside and stand on the side of the quays and watch the fight. See a Kaiju  _breathe_ , see it  _move_. 

"Hurry up!" Hermann seizes Newt's elbow and practically drags him along. "I refuse to risk my life because  _you_ are moving at a  _snail's pace_."

"Yeah, yeah," Newt mutters, but he follows Hermann down the stairs, into the lowest level of the Shatterdome, into darkness.

* * *

Hours in the darkness, listening to the fight a half-mile overhead.

Smell of being  _trapped_. Walls huge and stark. A cage.

The trainees and other scientists sit together, on the floor. Newt takes up residence against a back wall with his arms around his knees. Hermann joins him, mumbling angrily about the state of the shelters—too damp, and it makes his leg act up, and the lighting is god-awful, and on, and on—and they share a comfortable silence until Hermann says,

"I know that you'd like to be up there."

Newt shakes his head. Laughs hollowly. "Impractical."

"If you were to..." Hermann trails off, looks at the ceiling. Obviously full of disdain for Newt's "Kaiju groupie" tendencies. He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

2.

 

_"Is this all you have?"_

_"Yes, it is." Hermann sets down the final cardboard box. His scant belongings are stacked tidily at one end of the dormitory room. They call it a "flat", but Newt is not fooled. Or impressed. He eyes the bunkbeds with abject disdain._

_"At least we've been allotted our own desks."_

_"I can't imagine the admin being frigid enough to deny us_ that _." Newt sits down on the edge of his bed. Bottom bunk. He'd wanted to take the top but figured it would serve better as extra storage space. "I'm guessing that this place'll be pretty crowded in a few months."_

_"Why do you say that?" Hermann leafs through a stack of papers. Newt's just thankful that he hasn't wheeled a chalkboard in._

_"I always keep surplus supplies at my place. Anyways, people like us have a tendency to bring work home."_

_"What do you mean, 'people like us'?"_

_"Like...scientists."_

_Hermann removes some file folders and shifts them around. His posture is suddenly very rigid. He does not respond._

_"Oh, and another thing. If you're gonna..." Newt searches for a good metaphor and fails. "Bring anyone back to the room, just let me know, okay?"_

_"Excuse me?" Hermann lets a folder fall. Papers skid out. "Oh, of course. I should have_ known  _that you'd be falling back on base sexual behavior. Totally unsurprising."_

_"What? No, I was telling_ you _—I'm not gonna—I mean, not that I'm not—not that I don't, ha, not that I'm not_ getting _any but I really just—"_

_"No,_ Mister  _Geiszler, I will not be 'bringing anyone' back to the room." Hermann looks disgusted, mildly horrified, and a little sad._

_"Well, I was just_ saying _." Newt folded his arms up. "You know, if you..."_

_But he couldn't finish the sentence, because Hermann was glaring daggers at him, and then giving him a remarkably cold shoulder. And Newt was left thinking that Hermann was a good-looking guy, and would probably have brought a lot of people back to the room if he wasn't so damn cold._

* * *

_  
_The Category III Kaiju had thrashed its way through most of the half-constructed wall, halting further construction for the foreseeable future. Most of the docks had been taken out. Waterfront buildings were in ruins. They announce a death toll on the news, but Newt turns his head away.

He wakes up early. Pearly mist presses tight and cold around the windows. If he looks out and to the right, he can see part of the ruins left by last month's attack. The death toll had rocketed into the thousands.

Unsurprisingly, Hermann is holed up the K-Science lab. Newt opens the door to find him limping madly around the chalkboard, muttering to himself and white-faced.

"Hermann?"

Hermann turns. 

"Are you okay?" Newt sidesteps his desk. Hermann stares. His eyes are wild.

"No. If you must know. I am not." A muscle jumps in his jaw. 

"What—what the hell is wrong?" Newt is fumbling, desperate. Knows the look of pain, sees it now in Hermann's eyes. "Hermann, what're you—"

The equations are scrawled in a mad hand across the chalkboard, erratic and it frightens Newt; he doesn't know why until Hermann says,

"Three thousand and twenty six."

"Huh?" But Newt already knows.

"Three thousand," Hermann's fists are clenched, wound up tight like he's ready to strike. "And twenty six. And do you know where I was?"

"Don't—"

"I was in the  _basement_ of the  _Shatterdome_ with  _you_. I should have been—the prediction—it was  _all for nothing_ , all for nothing. Three thousand and twenty six lives. In  _these hands_." He thrusts his hands out, palms up. They are shaking. "Countless hours cooped up in this lab, never seeing sunlight, and for what? So that hundreds of  _children_ could die in their flats? In their classroom? On the streets?"

"Hermann, stop!" Newt cries out; Hermann falls silent. Newt inhales deeply, beyond unsettled. He's never seen Hermann like this—practically crazed. Didn't even reach for his cane. "P-please stop."

Silence.

"I failed, Newt."

Silence.

"You didn't."

"I failed them."

"You  _didn't_." 

"I did." Hermann looks up. "God help me, I did."

He slides down against the wall. Newt sees the open wound under his skin, so raw. It hurts Newt, too. 

"Shit, Hermann. I'm sorry, man." He slides down beside Hermann, maybe too close but this time Hermann doesn't snipe about personal space. He just looks up. He sniffs.

Newt realizes that Hermann is holding back tears.

"They put the goddamn  _bodies_ on the news. A little girl in primary school. Backpack, short hair, six years old. Six years old. She—"

But Hermann breaks off, shakes his head violently.

"I know," Newt says, although he cannot possibly know. "I know."

And he puts his arm around Hermann, and Hermann, hanging his head, lets him, and they sit together in silence for a long, long time.

* * *

"Mako!" He jogs to catch up with her. She inclines her head.

"Mr. Geiszler."

He gives her a look; he has no problem with Mako, of all people, using his first name. He follows her into the lift, unable to keep his eyes from the cut above her eyebrow, her bandaged right arm, the streaks of what looks like ash on her face.

"Are you okay?"

"Of course." She doesn't so much smile as tilt her lips sideways.

"Well, what happened?"

Mako looks at him. "A Kaiju, Mr. Geiszler."

"Mako, you don't have to call me that." He wants to touch the cut above her eyebrow; there's dried blood. She looks like she's been in the nastiest of schoolyard fight, magnified a thousand times. "You look like you've been through hell out there."

Her smile hitches and fades. "You should see Raleigh."

Newt swallows hard. He can only imagine; while Pentecost worried over Mako's fitness for duty, the Becket kid was still struggling to get back into the game. Still is—and Newt can only imagine the trials of drifting with a new partner, someone relatively unfamiliar. 

Before he knows it he's saying, "I worry about you guys out there."

Mako puts a narrow, solid hand on his shoulder. Her touch is warm. She's as tall as he is now. He remembers her at thirteen, fifteen, seventeen, so much shorter, never scrawny but  _skinny_ , kid-skinny, trailing Pentecost around the facilities and staring down the Jeager pilots in the bay. It's still sort of baffling, how long he's been here, and Mako is proof.

"Don't worry," she says. The lift hisses past another level. "Maybe it's like you always say, Newt."

And he mouths the words as she says them.

_Fortune favors the brave._

* * *

_  
_The next attack comes in the middle of the night, jolting Newt from sleep. The alarms scream, and he pulls a shirt on and goes barefoot across the hall to pound on Hermann's door. Misses the days of living together, before they expanded the Shatterdome and everyone except the youngest trainees and pilots got their own space.

"Do we go down to the shelter?"

"Of  _course_ we go down to the shelter!" Hermann is already dressed— _god_ , the man can pull on a jacket in about a millisecond flat—and flaps his arms nervously at Newt while Newt fumbles with his shoelaces and buttons his coat up. 

The halls and lifts are thronged with personell. There's a general commotion as the younger pilots, suited up, sprint around and everyone else tries to make their way calmly to the lowest levels of the Dome. Newt swears that he can already hear rending metal.

He sees Mako jog past, Raleigh beside her. Her tight youthful face is so damned  _bright_ under these harsh lights, and he feels a bitter pang of worry.

"She'll be fine," Hermann mutters as the lift doors grind closed. "They always are."

* * *

Then it's a long few hours in the darkness, and when the power fails they all huddle close together. Someone has a flashlight but the beam is weak and far away at the end of the cavernous shelter, like a distant dim star. 

One trainee, a young man with short hair, cries silently. Newt, sitting three feet away in the damp dark, tells him that it will be okay. Feels the weight of the lie on his tongue.

"No, it won't be." Sounds of hurried sniffs. "It won't be okay. I don't wanna die down here, man."

"We're not gonna die," Newt says, but the ground overhead shakes massively, and a few people cry out. And suddenly he's realizing—or is it remembering? Has he realized this before?—that the possibility of dying down here is very, very, very real. That at any moment a Kaiju could shatter the ceiling, that they could all be buried or killed by debris or by, in a terrible twist of irony, a Jaeger.

He's never known a feeling so absolutely terrifying.

* * *

_"Scared?" Newt is sprawled on his back, reading a backissue of_ Scientific American  _and pestering Hermann. Hermann is sitting at his desk, having engaged in conversation with Newt for, Newt's assuming, the sole purpose of shutting Newt up. "Not really. I mean, they're_ dangerous _, but so is, like,_ driving _."_

_"But you don't drive."_

_"Yeah, well." Newt drops the magazine. "Can't win 'em all, Hermann."_

_Hermann has stopped scolding Newt for using his first name when they are alone together. He pushes back his chair and stands, walks to his bed._

_"How about you? What's your greatest fear?"_

_"Living with a godawful housemate like you." Hermann snipes, but he says it sort of gently._

_"If only I was a little neater." Newt says without meaning it. Hermann looks at him in silence for a moment._

_"When did you lose your accent?"_

_"Huh?"_

_"Your German accent."_

_"Oh. Uh, a few years ago. I think I was fifteen or sixteen."_

_"Around the time you started university."_

_"I never said that." Shit, he shouldn't have played into this. Hermann's staring at him with a weird intensity. "Yeah, maybe."_

_"Because you were bullied for it."_

_Newt swallows harder than he'd meant to. He looks away. Hermann has_ never  _come close to even sort of slightly talking about this sort of thing; he'd rather distance himself from the world with his probabilities and theories and predictions. Hold everything at arm's length._

_"I never said that, either."_

_They'd shoved him down a flight of stairs—something that Newt had thought only happened in bad movies—and given him endless bloody lips and black eyes. Broken his glasses. He'd thought that MIT, of all places, would welcome him with open arms. Come in, fellow hopeless nerd. He hadn't figured that other students would take unkindly to working with a grad student eight years their junior._

_For the first time, Hermann smiles at him._

_"You didn't have to."_

* * *

_  
_Dawn breaks, and it rains. The intercom blares a woman's voice—the attack is over, all personell are to return to either their residences or their posts. Newt follows Hermann upstairs—they go slow because Hermann's leg is being a real bitch and his face gets all screwed up with mad concentration, like he's about to break through a particularly difficult equation.

"Oh, shit."

He's halted, staring up one of the holoboards. 

"Oh, no."

"What?  _What?_ " Hermann follows Newt's gaze.

_Charles and Hercules Hansen: Killed In The Line Of Duty To Humanity._

_  
_"No." Newt's heart sinks like a damn _rock_. "Hermann, no..."

But it's true. They stand side by side, with what feels like half the PPDC but is probably downwards of fifty people, and listen to Stcker Pentecost talk about the Hensens, and about bravery, and about sacrifice.

Later, when Newt steps into the K-Science Lab to find Hermann at his desk, slumped over with his head in his hands, he wants nothing more than to go to him and say  _it's okay, this isn't your fault_.

"I don't want to talk about it." Hermann says, very softly.

"Okay," Newt tells him, and does his damndest  _best_ to force every _nanogram_ of comfort and understanding or whatever the hell it is Hermann needs, what they all need right now. "Okay."

* * *

Night comes too fast. Hermann refuses to leave the lab, works on his new functions and predictions until the small hours of the morning. So Newt stays with him, drinking endless cups of black coffee, his eyes burning hellishly whenever he blinks.

It's almost 1 AM when Hermann drops his chalk. Newt, who has dozed off on a Kaiju parasite's tank, jerks awake.

"What's happening? What?"

But Hermann is silent. He stares ahead, unmoving.

Newt knows, doesn't want to ask.

"That bad, Hermann?"

And when Hermann looks away he knows that it's worse.

"The Marshall talks about the end a lot." Hermann shakes his head violently. "This is it."

* * *

Newt is locked out of the meeting. When the alarms go off he waits for Hermann, but Hermann doesn't come out of the Marshall's office. He starts heading for the lift but decides against it.

LOCCENT is garish with flashing lights and shouting and general chaos. Newt sidesteps the consoles and heads for Tendo's outpost.

"Hey, dude."

"Uh, what the hell?" Tendo doesn't even look up from the holoscreen. "You're _definitely_ supposed to be in the shelter, Geiszler."

"But I'm not."

"No," Tendo says. "And if you get killed, it's  _not_ my fault."

"Hey." Newt leans forward to look at the screen. "It's only a Category Two."

"Newt..." Tendo shakes his head, but he lets Newt stay. And half an hour later Hermann comes through the door ranting and waving his cane, and  _I've been looking everywhere for you, Geiszler,_ everywhere _, you sorry fool_ and they end up on the rooftop, ignoring the trainee who tells them to get the hell away.

Cherno Alpha dukes it out with the Kaiju some five miles out, and the two mad scientists stand in comfortable and terrified silence and watch the bright stars of not-so-distant explosions.

* * *

"It's going to get a lot worse, Newt."

"I know."

"This could be very dangerous."

"I  _know_."

"I know you know." Hermann presses his lips together. Adjusts his glasses.

The construction workers out at the wall have been pulling insane shifts, trying to regain lost time and effort. When Hermann leaves the room Newt can hear the grind of metal on metal. If he looks towards the sea he can see the bright lights on the wall, refracting across pine-pitch water.

It makes him endlessly sad. He falls asleep, exhausted and frightened and it's almost three in the morning. Is chased down by terrible dreams in which the Kaiju don't come for him, he's the only one left standing and wanders Hong Kong like a ghost. Wakes up surrounded by the smell of ash. Barely an hour has passed.

He gets up shaking, goes across the hall.

Knocks once before Hermann answers, without his glasses, squinting and glaring. 

"Oh," he says. "It's you."

Newt shivers. He tries to force the words down but he can't swallow, can barely breathe. Still feels the cold press of ruined air against his skin, alone, alone, alone, alone, alone, alone.

"Hermann," he says, softly, like a confession. "I'm scared, man. Really scared."

Hermann looks at him, unblinking. 

"Come in."

* * *

_"Wow," Newt breathes. "Look at it."_

_Hermann's eyebrows nearly disappear into his hairline. The Kaiju parasite is sort of...drifting...in the spare tank. Hermann thinks that it's horrifying. Pentecost thinks that it's disgusting and had damn well_ better  _not find its way out of the K-Science Labs._

_Newt thinks it's adorable._

_"Horrific. Sacrelige of nature."_

_"I think it's cute." Newt folds his arm, stubbornly, and bends over to look at the tank. The parasite is actually pretty huge, and that's a little alarming and he's not surprised that Hermann finds them totally gross._

_"Disgusting," Hermann mutters._

_"Hey. This thing might be kind of gross, but I'll bet_ it _didn't—"_

_"No, we are_ not  _discussing the Funhouse incident again."_

_"Really? Because_ man _, you were_ on the floor  _after, like,_ two shots _. I thought I was gonna have to carry you home."_

_What Newt doesn't mention is that he would have done so happily. The "Funhouse" (and he's pretty sure that's a shitty translation, but whatever) is a fairly dive-y place, but he doesn't mind so long as Hermann is there to drink with and make fun of when they start summoning people for karaoke._

_"I'd never subject you to that." Hermann snaps, but suddenly there's no poison in his voice. Newt thinks that he sounds pretty damn sad, and that he sort of absently touches his leg as he speaks, but they have a sort of code—that there are certain things that you don't talk about, like Newt's early education at MIT and the scar on his upper arm where one kid pulled out a boxcutter just when Newt_ thought  _he was getting good at pulling punches in return, or how Hermann got his leg the way it is and if it ever hurts. Newt made that mistake a few times, when Hermann winced or griped about it, but after a while he got the idea that it hurt Hermann even more to talk about it, and after that he stopped asking and starting ignoring it._

_Besides, Hermann bitches about plenty of things._

_"Never mind." Newt looks at the parasite in silence, mind running a million miles an hour, already figuring that he could run some sweet tests on this creature without actually harming it, or coming into full contact with it. He's not keen to stick a whole limb into that tank, anyways. "Forget it."_

_But then he turns around and Hermann is smiling at him tersely._

_"Sorry. Sorry. That was—dick-y of me."_

_Hermann glances from his cane to Newt's face and back. "You're good to me, Newton. Too good to me."_

_And as he walks away, striding briskly, Newt thinks about all the times he's considered asking if Hermann's_ got  _anyone these days. He figures no, because Hermann's not exactly hanging socks up on the door, but he's also pretty damn quiet about that kind of thing, and honestly Newt's starting to get curious and—_ _  
_

_Not curious as in_ curious _, but as in..._

_Yeah. Curious._

* * *

 He wakes up in the middle of the night with his arms around someone, head on their chest. Listening to a heartbeat.

There's a moment of silence, and Newt wonders why he's woken up, and, briefly, who he's in bed with, and then he realizes that it's Hermann and then he hears the all-consuming scream of rending metal.

A buliding on the waterfront, empty since the attack, is collapsing. Through the thin window Newt can hear screams, sirens. Hermann shifts and Newt expects him to sit up and turn Newt out into the night. Stupidly, he feels a hot rush of semi-shame—what was he  _thinking_ , practically inviting himself into his coworker's bed in the middle of the night? 

But Hermann says, softly in the blue darkness, that it will all be alright.

"Sounds like the end of the world out there," Newt murmurs, and lets himself fall back into the warm arms of sleep.

* * *

_"You've gotta be_ kidding  _me." Newt pushes the folders aside, papers fanned out across the floor and worktable. Calculations, functions, tables: Hermann's predictions pertaining to the next possible Kaiju attack._

_He mimicks Hermann poorly, strangling the accent. "No entrails on my side of the room,_ Mister Geiszler _. Oh, but I'll take the liberty of spreading my stupid_ pure mathematics _, my_ handwriting of God _, all over_ your  _side of the worktable!"_

_He gathers up the papers and returns them, griping quietly, to Hermann's side of the shared room. Reminds himself that in a couple of months they'll be living in their own quarters._

_He's shoving the papers into the desk when he sees the photograph. No frame, and one corner's been all wrinkled, and it's fairly faded anyways. But the woman is young and beautifuly, strikingly so: a halo of dark hair tinged red with light, a smooth dark oval of face and high cheekbones._

_It's the way that she's looking at the camera that really gets to Newt. He spends way too long staring at the background—is it Berlin? San Francisco? She's standing in front of a railing, he thinks—but eventually he puts the photograph back on the desk and returns to his Kaiju entrails._

_When Hermann comes in that afternoon, Newt forces his way through smalltalk (which Hermann never instigates but always participates in) before asking._

_"Who is she?"_

_"Who?" Hermann says, dutifully, but Newt knows that he already knows._

_"Woman in the photograph. She a...?" Don't say it, don't say it, Hermann—_

_"Oh. You found..."_

_"Girlfriend?"_

_Hermann pauses, back to Newt. Stiff._

_"Wife," he says._

_Newt feels like he's been slapped. Hard. And then doused with glacial melt. Possibly electric-shocked._

_"You're_ married _?"_

_Hermann flinches._

_  
_Shit. _Newt feels pretty bad for bringing it up. And come to think of it, he's never actually seen Hermann wear a ring. Or heard him talk about a wife, for that matter._

_"I was married, yes." Hermann speaks quietly, like he's forcing the words out in the right order. "Many years ago, when I was very young. It didn't work out."_

_"What happened?" Newt blurts before he can stop himself. Hermann rolls his eyes and sits in his desk chair. One hand goes to his leg._

_"I'd rather not talk about it, if it's all the same to you."_

_"Sure," Newt says, but he can't stop looking at Hermann_ differently _. "Sure, man."_

_But it's not "sure", because it's just so totally_ weird  _that Hermann—Hermann!—was_ married _, and honestly Newt had pegged him for a total loner who'd maybe hooked up with someone (said person being of debatable and ever-changing imagined gender) like, maybe once in college. Maybe. But being_ married _, and having—and—_

_Just._

_Weird._

_Beyond weird, actually._

_Newt dances around the subject for over a week, finally cornering Hermann in the mess hall. He can't stand it anymore._

_"Look, dude, I totally understand if you don't want to talk about this right now, or, like, ever, but—"_

_"If this is about my—photograph—I'd really rather not."_

_"I just—how did you—I mean, not that you're—haha—I just—"_

_Hermann turns, nearly spilling hot tea. There's a kind of sad, frantic look in his eyes that Newt's never seen before._

_"Her name was Vanessa, if you must know. We were both very young, we were both very foolish, and it seemed a logical step at the time. Our relationship fell apart very quickly."_

_He begins to walk away, but Newt calls out,_

_"Why?"_

_Hermann turns and fixes Newt with a withering glare._

_"Some people are just not compatible together, Mr. Geiszler. You of all people should know that."_

* * *

 The destruction is totally awesome. Newt, who wakes up to find an empty bed and room vacent of Hermann, dresses hastily and goes down to the bayside to gape.

And honestly, that's all there is to do.

He counts five foundations—huge office buildings just gone, the rubble still smoking and probably horribly noxious. Police and fire crews idle beside stalled trucks at the edge of one of the fallen buildings.

"Aren't you going to try to...?" He makes a sort of broad gesture with his hand. "Clear this mess up? Off the streets?"

The nearest firefighter, a short woman with a high ponytail, adjusts her jacket and gives him a frank glare.

"You think we have time for that? The scientists at the Shatterdome predicted another attack within the next twenty-four hours, as bad as this or worse."

"What?" Newt's more shocked than anything. The woman puts her helmet on.

"Those guys, I've heard that they never sleep, up there." She glances towards the Shatterdome. "Well, I wouldn't either. I feel bad for them, you know. They must have the weight of the world on their shoulders."

"Yeah. Yeah, they must." Newt follows her gaze to the Shatterdome, looming against a flat gray sky, and thinks about Hermann pacing in the K-Science labs, scrawling out his mad equations on the chalkboard, and suddenly he does have the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he wants nothing more than to shed it.

* * *

 

_Hermann catches up with him on the roof. Newt's escaped the crowded mess hall and really the air up here is bitingly cold, but the city's like a pulse, like a heartbeat or something, every window dizzy with neon._

_"I was very short with you last night."_

_"Huh?" Newt turns. The wind cuts through his jacket. Hermann leans heavily on his cane. "Oh. Dude, it's totally—no, it's fine. I shouldn't have asked, really, that was actually kind of rude of me because, you know, you obviously didn't want to talk about it and I totally pressed you and I shouldn't have done that."_

_Hermann stands next to him, leaning on the metal railing. There's the hiss of steam escaping from a vent, like the Shatterdome is breathing._

_"I was twenty-two years and teaching at the University of Berlin. A temporary post. Advanced Mathematics. Most of the students were my age, some older."_

_"Was she a student? Your wife?"_

_"No." Hermann shakes his head. He squints out at the canyons of neon and florescent. "No. We met on the train, actually. She dropped her scarf on the platform, and I followed her onto the train. When I bent down to get it, I..." he trails off for a moment, and Newt knows immediatly that his leg must have given him some kind of trouble. "I should have known then—before I'd even met her, she'd caused me pain."_

_A moment of silence lingers, and for once Newt doesn't break it._

_"I tapped her shoulder and she turned around. She was—the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. A face like...an angel, I suppose. We began to converse, and I was so lost in her. All of her. She was—is—a very clever woman. Intelligent. That's the most attractive attribute a person can have: intelligence."_

_"So you were, like, in love with her? Like, love at first sight?"_

_Hermann is quiet. "No. There was no love. Only loss." Another beat of silence. "You must understand—I was very young, still, but not so young. I had never brought a girl home to meet my parents. You know how parents are. They are from another time, a time when if you did not—if there wasn't any girl—they assumed, they didn't say but I knew, Newton, I knew that they thought—"_

_And suddenly Newt's cheeks are hot, and he wants more than anything to derail the conversation because this is getting really close to a subject that he doesn't want to talk about, like, ever with Hermann, unless—but—definitely not tonight—_

_"And so I asked her on a date. And another. And I was lost in her but I was not in love. I suppose that I was in love with the idea of her. We were married at the city hall later that year. I don't think that she was ever in love with me."_

_While Newt is trying to picture Hermann getting married, and failing, Hermann plunges onward._

_"I knew that there would be other men—it wasn't Vanessa—she wasn't—isn't like that." He shrugged, leaned a little more heavily on his cane. "It was my fault. I'm not...agreeable, not the way a husband should be. I was still very young, and foolish, and making a pittance from the university. We lived off the campus. She worked as a model, brought in more money. Everyone thought she was beautiful—too beautiful to have married someone like me. A genius, but a cripple. A gimp, they called me. She went around with other models, to parties. Saw other men. We fought—never about that, never about the other men. She never lied to me, either. Told me when she'd kissed someone else. Said that she was sorry. I knew that it wouldn't last. My parents were hoping for a baby. We began to live apart, and then I got the posting at PDCC, and we saw very little of each other. She went to England to work, and I came to Hong Kong, and we saw even less of each other. Just after beginning my work here, we were divorced. I thought it was a temporary posting, this city."_

_And Newt is maybe shamelessly staring at Hermann's profile, and Hermann is staring out at Hong Kong, and suddenly the city doesn't feel so big, or so lonely._

_"You know something?" Newt says, softly, and he's not sure that Hermann can even hear him over the wind. "I'm glad it's not."_

* * *

The attack comes in the early evening. They've at least been forewarned, and a majority of the city's citizens are evacuated to the shelters, and Shatterdome personell go underground again. 

Not the pilots—they suit up. Newt passes Mako outside the bay doors, standing beside Raleigh. They're both fit and handsome and striking in their suits. Ready to conquer the world, he thinks.

He mouths  _fortune favors the brave_  in her direction. He thinks she sees him, and that makes him feel mildly better. 

The city shakes above them. Shelter darkness smells damp, whether it's a converted subway station downtown or the Shatterdome's huge maw of space. 

This is one of the worst, probably the worst that most people can remember. For the first time, Newt isn't fascinated by the possiblity of the Kaiju over their heads.

He's scared.

Someone prays aloud; a Christian prayer. Something about lords and shepards and not wanting, and when they get to the part about the Valley of Death they trail off, and there's silence. 

And then the sound of an explosion, ripping through the damp, poorly-lit air.

Screams. Newt lets his hand find Hermann's as the lights go out.

The backup generators don't kick in. 

"That sounded pretty fucking bad," someone mutters. Newt feels sick. Thinks about Mako and Raleigh up there, doing the best they can but it's probably not enough—hopefully it is, hopefully they'll kill that thing.

Thing. He's never thought about Kaiju like that. As things. Always saw the possiblity before the terror. It wasn't ever like this.

 

In the darkness, all that he can see is the white of Hermann's knuckles on his cane.

 

Well into the night, they're released. Newt hears the voice over the intercom before anything.

All essential personell to the main floor, repeat, all essential personell to the main floor, repeat—

  
And then there's Stacker, standing at his podium, addressing a crowd, and Newt knows what he's about to say before the words are out of Pentecost's mouth.

"Lost in the line of duty to their global community, Mak—"

"No," Newt breathes. "No, oh, God, no—"

"—o Mori and Raleigh Becket will remain, forever, heroes."

"No, Mako." His throat is tight but he's light-headed, sags against the wall. "Mako, no."

And Pentecost is turning away, and the dome is full of silence, and this time Newt doesn't have to ask; Hermann eases open the door and Newt sits on the edge of Hermann's bed and cries into his hands, aching with desperate sadness for Mako Mori, for the little lost girl who'd made the Shatterdome her home and the program personell her family, who'd have kicked his ass five ways to Sunday if she knew that he still thought of her as a fourteen year-old with awkward limbs and a dorky smile.

Hermann stands against the wall, face turned away, but Newt sees his shoulders heaving and knows that he, too, is all bent up inside with grief. 

"Fuck." Newt rubs at his face. His throat is burning. "Fuck, she was so  _young_ , Hermann."

Hermann doesn't respond, but his shoulders still. 

"I phoned my parents three months after moving to Hong Kong. I was standing in the rec room, using a payphone. My mother said, I suppose that this means no children. She was right, of course, but as she said those words I saw Mako Mori running past in her stockings and school uniform. She saw me through the window and slid to a stop, and she waved and put her face against the window and—" and Hermann breaks off, tears glinting in his eyes, "and made a face at me, and then blew me a kiss and ran away. And I said to my mother—I said, no, Mother, you are wrong."

"Stop," Newt moans into his hands, but he doesn't mean it. 

"We all had a child in Mako Mori." 

And suddenly Newt thinks, unbidden, horribly vividly, of their bodies. Mako and Raleigh, in Gipsy Danger, in the Pacific. Had they even made it to the surface? Had they—

He doubles over, dizzy with sadness and choking on tears. He hasn't cried in a long time.

"Why?" He says, not to Hermann but to—whoever might be listening, whoever  _let this happen, dammit_ —and Hermann comes and sits beside him, and puts an arm around him, and Newt lets himself put his arm around Hermann. And they sit in silence for a long, long time.

* * *

And then it's past midnight and they're on the bed together in the blue semidarkness, and outside it's raining and Newt can't stop thinking, just  _thinking_ , and it makes him sad and then sadder, and all he can hear is Hermann's breathing and the rain.

* * *

_Okay. So maybe they kiss_ once _, after getting really ridiculously drunk at a karaoke bar over by the Bone Slums._

_It's one of those Hong Kong streets, neon-drenched and crowded just after an evening rainstorm, that could be anywhere in the city. They don't sing, but Newt's just gotten his paycheck (which, to be fair, is pretty scant) and he keeps buying drinks, and then Hermann retaliates by buying more drinks (and he keeps downing pints, which makes sense because, you know, he's German) and Newt, who is also German but is far more of a lightweight, tries to impress Hermann by drinking—_

_"Jagermeister?" Hermann laughs, a kind of shocked you're-not-really-gonna-do-it laugh, and Newt downs the scalding alcohol in a swig, almost coughs and is probably on the verge of, like, passing out but doesn't._

_So Hermann drinks some, too, and within_ minutes  _they're totally hammered. And somehow Newt ends up practically in Hermann's lap, with his lips on his lab partner's neck, and wow, fuck he's actually pretty hard right now, but so is Hermann so maybe it's okay? And this is really awkward but that doesn't stop them from ending up against an alley wall, getting way too handsy but it feels so_ good  _to be with another person, this close, the first time in way too long, like they're both trying to breathe each other in and he knows that it would have gone much, much further if the fucking alarms hadn't gone off, and they'd gone down to a public shelter._

_And sat in silence, side by side, for an hour and as it turned out there wasn't even a Kaiju; just a false alarm from the Shatterdome._

_The next day, neither of them really remember anything; well, actually, Newt remembers kissing Hermann pretty fucking clearly, but if Hermann remembers he doesn't say anything._

_So they go about their business somewhat awkwardly and avoid any skin-to-skin contact for the next couple of days, and then everything's back to normal._

_"Normal"._

_Funny word, that._

* * *

_  
_He wakes up in the narrow hours of early morning. Feels like he's waiting to be slapped. Punched. The blow's going to land any second—

But it's quiet, and the rain has stopped, so—

—so—

And then the world ends.

* * *

The Kaiju thrashes through the harborside, but all that Newt hears is the all-consuming explosion of a building being taken down by something huge.

"Fuck!" He's off the bed in a flash, something like survival instincts kicking in. Grabs Hermann's arm, hauls him to his feet. "Fuck, what do we—"

"There isn't time to get to—"

Their eyes meet. The shelter.

No time.

Newt is distantly aware of being shoved under Hermann's desk, a stanard-issue metal affair bolted to the wall. And really, it's not like  _this thing_ is going to save their lives if a Kaiju crashes through the Shatterdome, but it's worth a shot.

This time, he's certain that the world really  _is_ ending out there. And he can't pretend not to hear the screams. Hermann's face is ghostly in the dark.

"That was the banking building," Hermann murmurs. He counts off nearby buildings, offices, always closer to the Shatterdome, always closer, always—

"Hermann," Newt almost swallows the words. "Hermann, I think we're about to die."

He doesn't expect Hermann to be scared. Doesn't expect terror. He half-expects Hermann's clenched jaw, ashen face. 

"No, Newton." Hermann draws in a deep breath. "I believe that I am almost  _certain_ that we are about to die."

Another explosion. It occurs to Newt, suddenly and horrifyingly, that there are no Jaegers out hunting tonight. Only the Kaiju stalks the streets. 

He doesn't want to think about the path of destruction, but that's not the way Newt's mind works, and he sees the rubble and the bodies like he's standing on the street right now, staring at them. Sees blood, mangled limbs, shelters empty and Hong Kong in ruins.

"If we're about to die—" Suddenly his heart is thrumming high and fast in his throat, chest all skittery. He closes the distance between them in a single almost-frantic motion, and suddenly everything is that terrible sweet pleasure-pain that's become achingly familiar, and Hermann isn't really pulling away but he's not exactly  _leaning into it_ , and then he  _is_ pulling away, blinking, staring at Newt.

"I've been waiting a long time to do that," Newt whispers into the darkness, and the corners of Hermann's mouth twitch into a half-smile, and he finds Newt's hand.

 

* * *

Then the world's in flames around them—how did it get this far so fast, how did this happen, is it real is this happening fuck Hermann is this happening what's happening oh fuck oh shit oh shit put your hands over your head Hermann put your hands over your—

_put your hands over your—_

* * *

  _"Shit. Okay. This is gonna hurt." He's sitting in this plastic chair in the backroom of a Hong Kong tattoo parlor, just past closing time, the needle horrifyingly sharp. Hermann, standing beside him looking pale and mortified. New laughing, asking if Hermann will hold his hand, just for this one second because fuck—oh, yeah, okay, maybe that wasn't_ so  _bad—_ _  
_

_"Absolutely_ insane _!" Hermann standing on a stool to reach the top of the chalkboard, equations scrawled over every available inch of space—_

_Hermann and Newt sitting alone in the mess hall, debating very hotly possible solutions to the climate change quandry—_

_Plastic umbrella, childhood rainstorm—_

_Empty classroom, one boy alone with his head on a desk—_

_Newt trying, and failing, to cajole Hermann into dancing with him at a personell holiday party—_

_That one time Newt got really sick and lost his voice for a week but was otherwise pretty much unaffected, and Hermann smiled at the skies and said that a merciful God had finally, finally answered his prayers and that this was going to be the best time of his life, while Newt resorted to writing notes on Hermann's legal pads and gesticulating wildly—_

_The two of them falling asleep leaning on each other's shoulders during an evacuation—_

_Five years—_

_Seven years nine years ten years eleven years_

_whitelightwhitelight oh god everywhere everything end of the world oh fuck_

* * *

_  
_"Hermann?" He's on his back. The sky is white. No—gray. Rain. " _Hermann_?"

Newt pushes himself to his knees, then his feet. Blinks. His ears are ringing; blood crawls from his nose.

"No," he breathes. " _No_."

The Shatterdome is in  _pieces_ around him—literally, pieces. The wail of sirens mounts in the distance. Newt registers the huge footprint, looks away.

Pretends not to see the first bodies. Blood. Too much. 

Too—

No.

No.

_Nononononononononono—_

_  
_He breaks into a jagged, limping run, falls to his knees in the ash.

"Hermann, Hermann—open your eyes, Hermann." Grabbing Hermann's limp shoulders, practically hauling the guy's head into his  _lap_ , and why is Hermann so fucking  _white_ , and why are his eyes half-closed? 

"Please open your eyes, Hermann, you've gotta—just—fucking  _open your eyes_ okay, I know you're okay, you're always okay, remember, we're both always okay, nothing can touch us we're rock stars remember we're supposed to save the world remember?  _Remember_ , Hermann? Hermann, you stupid fucker, you stupid—oh, fuck, open your eyes, please, please, I know you're okay, I know you're—"

But he knows before he bends his head to Hermann's chest that there will be no pulse, and he knows before he feels Hermann's stilled neck that Hermann Gottlieb is dead.

* * *

Newt is silent.

Stares dumbly at Hermann's face, the glassy eyes.

For once, no words.

* * *

"Hermann," he says, softly. Rain on his shoulders. Bodies in the Pacific. A little girl with black hair. "Hermann, it should have been me."

* * *

_It should have been me, Gottlieb._

* * *

_  
_"Hermann," he says, softly. "Hermann, you _idiot_ , I lo—"

* * *

"Geiszler."

" _Geiszler_."

" _Newton Geiszler—_ "

"What?  _What_?" Newt jerks awake at his desk, sits upright slowly. Rubs his cheek. Golden daylight spills through the window blinds. The clock reads 8:15 AM.

"Yo, Geiszler." Tendo is almost shouting through the intercom system. "Dude, were you asleep?"

"What?" Newt blinks. His chest is still horribly tight. "I—yeah, I—where's Hermann?"

"Gottlieb?"

"Ohmygodhe'sokayright?"

Tendo is silent for a beat, and Newt's chest twists. 

"Um. Didn't you guys spend, like, all night working in the labs? I saw him getting tea in the mess hall a few hours ago. Said you were asleep on your desk. Well, specifically he said that you were 'slacking off again', but you know, you guys keep such weird hours—"

But Newt isn't listening, because the lab door swings open and Hermann comes in drinking a cup of tea, and Newt's on his feet in an instant, scrambling across the lab.

"Holy  _shit_ , Hermann, you scared the fucking daylights out of me." 

And when he throws his arms around Hermann, the other scientist just stands there, rigid, trying not to spill his tea, and he kind of pats Newt on the back awkwardly. And Newt is just clinging to Hermann, drinking in the feeling of just standing there with his arms around someone else. He's never been so glad to see someone, not in his entire life.

The world might end tomorrow, might end next week, but for now they have each other, and even if they both don't really know or maybe understand, they've got whatever  _this_ is for now, and that's middle ground enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Sup! There might be minor discrepancies in this work, because although I watched the movie (it was awful quality online Iknowit'snotlegalokay), I don't know enormous amounts about Pacific Rim. But it's awesome. And stuff. So.


End file.
